A Tale from the Metro: Discovery
by PartyPat22
Summary: A lone survivor, lacking purpose, bereft of knowledge pertaining to the world before or the greater society that still exists, stumbles his way into what passes for civilization.


The man, barely more than a boy, stumbled to his feet, and approached the shelf he knew to be on the other side of the chamber. He could not see it, could not see anything in the total darkness of his home. It was a darkness so profound that it cooled the skin.

Black as ink, rarely had his eyes seen anything else. Dim emergency lights in the neighboring tunnels and rooms had greeted him on occasion, when his parents needed a hand carrying something back. The bright glow of fire from time to time, sprouting, growing, and wilting under their pot or between a circle of stones when it became too cold to bare or they needed to be rid of the remnants of their food; rat bones and fur, insect bits, and pieces of mushroom.

"If you leave out food, it will attract mutants, and if you attract mutants here, we all die." His father had told him that so many times, he could still hear it distinctly at any waking hour. He once had eaten a snack cake from the surface, dry, stale, sickening, yet delicious. How his father had gotten ahold of it for him, he never knew. He dreamed of the surface from time to time, but the stories his mother told him of what it used to be like always mixed with those of horrors his father warned of.

They always ended up more or less the same: beautiful trees of colors he could only imagine grew out of towering, domed spires. Lights filled the sky and the horizon, leaving nothing in darkness. Happy, smiling people, like his parents after they had found a bottle of wodka, surrounded him in every direction. And then people started screaming, melting, their skin peeling off. He would scream, if he could, but instead he only gasped for air, finding he couldn't breath. His own skin started peeling off, his hands turning red and bloody like a squashed rat. Snarling beasts, masses of fur and teeth, climbed down from the bark of the trees above on four or more legs, licking their lips in anticipation. The beautiful lights filling the sky turned red and angry, shining down on him alone as if to apply a crushing weight.

Normally, his parents would wake him from these nightmares and hold him still, but they didn't the last time he slept. He shook his head, snapping out of his memories, and grasped the one thing left on the "shelf," a stack of cinderblocks, four wide with three stacked atop each other. His hand found the tin, and he tried to recall what it was. The old, preserved food they could find, they saved for when nothing else was around, and now they were down to only this. He clutched it in both hands, bringing his fingers to rest painfully between the sharp ring and the rest of the cold lid. With all the care he could muster, he pried the lid open and carefully lifted it to rest to the side. An acrid stench wafted up to him, sweet and sickly. He reached in with abandon, taking the fish between his fingers and eating it without a moment's thought. It was all gone in mere seconds, leaving a hole in his belly unfilled.

He let the tin fall to the floor. He was beyond caring about the cold little room. As he walked over to his nest of rags, shirts, and upholstery, he didn't dare look towards the back of the chamber, the way leading eventually through snaking corridors to an immovable steel door keeping the surface out. He knew that door was closed, as was the door at the end of the room. But what was in between him and the door leading outside, he dared not think of.

He grabbed the spear next to his makeshift bedding from where it leaned against the wall. It was a simple thing, a metal pole sharpened on one end, decent enough for hunting the vermin that kept him fed, albeit just barely. Next he grabbed the chunk of charcoal, the torch made of rags stuffed into a metal vessel, and the pouch full of mold. It was bread once, a long time ago, but now it served as a lifeline against infections. There was nothing else worth taking: his father's wallet, his mother's purse, a broken airsoft gun. He was wearing all the thin rags and layered clothes he owned that weren't useless besides for bedding.

He stood in the middle of the dark room then for minutes without end, perhaps waiting for something. A gear to click in his mind. A solution to be remembered. His parents to tell him they had found something to eat. Nothing came to him. He walked listlessly over to the other exit from the room, where the pipe leaked when their pitiful clamp was loosened and the vessels beneath collected what they needed. A flimsy plastic jug was waiting for him, already full of cold water. He wrapped it into his "jacket" with a length of bootlaces by the top and handle, then put his hand on the film of dust covering the metal of the door.

He hesitated for long moments before pushing it and hearing the shrieking of its old hinges. As he stepped out into the passageway, the faint stench of the room, one that had been growing since the last time he awoke, was banished for good when he slammed the door shut with his back. The tunnel was just as dark his room, and just as silent. He lifted his legs forward mechanically, pushing off from the door, willing himself to leave the confines of nearly his whole life behind.

No rats squeaked. No insects scuttled. No pipes dripped. The only things punctuating the silence of the deserted tunnels were his footsteps and the light tapping of the bottom of his spear. He felt no need to light the torch and simply left it in the stitched together "pocket" of his bundled clothing. His mind started now and then, dredging up a memory or a feeling, but he stopped it as soon as it did, focusing on the black stretch ahead.

Eventually he came to a wall, not smooth like the others, but haphazardly formed from jagged chunks, silt-like powdery debris, and larger bricks, blocking the way forward. It was insurmountable, or it would have been if not for a minuscule tunnel his parents had once found. It had been chewed and scraped through the mountain of rubble a year or more ago, too narrow for his parents to fit through, but perhaps just wide enough for his emaciated form.

He pointed his spear forward and prodded around for it, then into it, checking for inhabitants, obstructions, and sturdiness of the inner ceiling and floor. The rut upheld his inspection, and so he took his time stepping up the mound and climbing in headfirst, his spear pressed tightly to his chest. He gripped uneven parts of the unnatural tunnel to pull himself forward, pushing with his knees and legs, moving like a wriggling snake. His progress could be measured in inches centimeters, and the crawl through what couldn't have been more than a few meters lasted an eternity.

All the while he poked and prodded with his spear, using it to feel what he couldn't see. His hand slipped through dried, powdery refuse, surely old rat shit, but he pushed it out of his mind as he continued. Mold and dust fell into his face as he pushed on, slowing him down even more lest he stir up clouds of it. A light shone to him as he reached a slight bend, and he suddenly quickened the pace, throwing caution to the wind. His hand slipped as he crawled over the crest of the small tunnel through the debris. White dust plumed below him as brittle detritus tumbled to a stop. A stale miasma filled his nostrils and he finally gave in to coughing violently, once, twice, before shuddering out another into his sleeve and waiting for the dust to settle.

A metallic ringing sound reached him from further along the tunnel, like a kettle being hit with a large spoon. Like the stewpot at home being stirred a bit too vigorously, as he remembered it so long ago. His spear clattered lightly to a stop, tossed before him. He braced himself on a solid block of rubble and swung his legs out of the hole, onto the pebble-strewn floor of the tunnel. He stretched his arms, back, and legs, feeling the pleasant strain of his joints and muscles righting themselves.

A light shone to him in the distance, faint, yet far brighter than any emergency lighting. It shifted and flickered, wavering, or perhaps disrupted. With a huff, he bent down and hefted the spear once more. Warm air hit him as he approached, his eyes locked on the light at the end of the tunnel. A metallic clacking reached his ears, but he trudged on, crunching gravel under foot.

Distinctive shapes shown around the light, slightly moving figures; he began to call out through a parched, dry throat. "H-hey. . . Hello-" A rasping cough cut his greeting short. He didn't dare reach for his water, lest he alarm those he approached. The smell of something, meat perhaps, awoke his insides to their destitute state. His guts rumbled, wracking him with pain and forming a feeling like a hollow lump in the pit of his stomach.

On he walked, shambling upon calloused feet barely covered by tatters, before one of the silhouettes shifted more purposely. He could see details of the figure now; a broad-shouldered man wearing a ratty jacket. The man lifted a long object to his shoulder and called out, "Identify yourself!"

He stopped in his tracks, trying to think of what to say. "I. I am-" He cleared his throat, and tried again. "I am alone, just a traveller" he tried to get out, but his words were cut off by the deafening boom of a rifle. The sound of a casing clinking as it hit a rail followed, and then silence returned to fill the tunnel.


End file.
